The present invention relates to trust-metric networks. More specifically, the present invention relates to prioritizing communications via trust-metrics methods and apparatus.
With the wide-spread use of computers, cell phones, PDAs, and the like, it has become easier for people to communicate with each other. As a result, more parents call children, more friends chat over IM with other friends, more business send e-mail to other businesses, and the like. Unfortunately, this also results in people making and receiving calls from “wrong numbers,” businesses making unsolicited calls to people, often at dinner time, businesses and individuals receiving “spam” e-mail, and the like. In the past several years, unsolicited communications have become more burdensome to recipients.
To address such problems, regulations have been passed to attempt to reduce the amount of unwanted communication. For example, telemarketing laws have been passed to allow consumers to opt-out of cold-call lists via use of a national telephone registry. As another example, federal and state spam laws have been passed to allow consumers and businesses to request “removal” from unsolicited e-mail mailing lists.
These regulations have only been somewhat effective. For every regulation, there are work-arounds. For example, telemarketing laws do not appear to cover telemarketers outside the US, and I or telemarketers making VOIP calls. As another example, e-mail spammers with overseas servers are beyond enforcement jurisdiction.
The problem with unwanted communications is now being extended to new forms of communication, including IM-type chat, SMS, data feeds, pop-up web windows, and the like.
For businesses and individuals who send out “legitimate” communications or communications that should be of interest to recipients, there is a similar problem. More specifically, how to accurately target communications to recipients. Most legitimate businesses, or the like often desire not to send out “spam,” as it tends to reduce the businesses good will and reputation. Additionally, their money is wasted by paying to send out communications to disinterested parties.
One solution for those who send out communications has been via keyword purchasing of search results. As is common with search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, and the like, any number of “sponsored” ads may appear as a search result. For example, searching on the term “Vioxx” currently leads to a number of results related to personal injury lawyers. As can be seen, such results are not desired by individuals searching for chemical structure of Vioxx or those interested in clinical research of Vioxx, for example.
Accordingly, in light of the above, what is desired are methods and apparatus that target communications to recipients without the drawbacks, as discussed above.